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{{Use Indian English|date=August 2017}}

[[File:Urmila Pawar headshot.jpg|thumb|Pawar in 2017]]

'''Urmila Pawar''' is an Indian writer and activist. She is a prominent figure in the [[dalit]] and [[Feminism|feminist]] movements in India and her works, all of which are written in [[Marathi language]], have often been hailed as a critique of social discrimination and the ''[[Varna (Hinduism)|savarna]]'' exploitation by commentators and media outlets.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The weave of my life: A dalit woman's memoirs|last=Urmila|first=Pawar|date=2008|publisher=Stree|isbn=9788185604909|location=Kolkata|oclc=751401950}}</ref>

Pawar's short stories including "Kavach" and "A Childhood Tale" are widely read and form the part of the curriculum at various Indian universities. Her documentation with Meenakshi Moon on the participation of dalit women was a major contribution to the construction of dalit history from a feminist perspective in India.

Pawar's autobiography ''Aidan'' (''Weave''), which was one of the first of its kind account by a dalit woman, won her acclaim and numerous accolades. The book was later translated into English by Maya Pandit and released under the title ''The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs''. Wandana Sonalkar has written the foreword for the book.

==Career==

===Early life and education===
Pawar was born in 1945 in Adgaon village of Ratnagiri district in the Konkan district of [[Bombay Presidency]] (now the state of [[Maharashtra]]).<ref name=":0">{{cite book|first=Sharmila |last=Rege |author-link=Sharmila Rege |title=Writing caste, writing gender: reading Dalit women's testimonies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Msaki69NQHsC&pg=PA256|year=2006|publisher=Zubaan|isbn=978-81-89013-01-1|pages=256}}</ref> When she was 12 years old, she and her family converted to Buddhism along with other members of their community after [[B. R. Ambedkar]] called for people from the Dalit community to renounce Hinduism.<ref name="indianexpress.com">{{Cite news|url=http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/notes-from-the-margins-dalit-writer-urmila-pawars-autobiography-inspires-a-marathi-play/|title=Notes From the Margins: Dalit writer Urmila Pawar's autobiography inspires a Marathi play|date=2014-07-20|newspaper=The Indian Express|access-date=2016-10-08}}</ref>

Pawar was acutely aware of her caste identity even as a child because of the repeated instances of discrimination and humiliation she faced in her school and other places. She talks about an incident in school where her classmates invited her for a potluck lunch but clearly told her not to bring any food. Post-lunch, she also found herself as a topic of gossip for having eaten too much food. She also narrates an incident where her English teacher humiliated her for her poor English.{{cn|date=December 2019}} She has described how her community lived in the centre of the village, unlike Dalit communities elsewhere in the Presidency that were usually expected to live at the periphery.<ref name=":0" /> Her father was a teacher in a school for untouchable children. She has also noted that her father neither participated in the [[Mahad Satyagraha]] organised by Ambedkar nor inter-dining arranged by [[Vinayak Damodar Savarkar]], although her elder sister, Shantiakka, often missed school to attend the inter-dining lured by sweet delicacies served there.<ref name="Rege2006"/>

Pawar has a [[Master of Arts]] in [[Marathi literature]]. She retired as an employee of the Public Works Department of the state of Maharashtra.{{cn|date=December 2019}}

===''Aaidan'' (''The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs'')===
''Aaidan'' her autobiography written in Marathi has been translated into English and titled as ''The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs''. In her foreword to the English translation, Wandana Sonalkar writes that the title of the book ''The Weave'' is a metaphor of the writing technique employed by Pawar, "the lives of different members of her family, her husband's family, her neighbours and classmates, are woven together in a narrative that gradually reveals different aspects of the everyday life of Dalits, the manifold ways in which caste asserts itself and grinds them down"<ref name="Pavāra2009">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5EELAQAAMAAJ|title=The weave of my life: a Dalit woman's memoirs|date=June 2009|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=978-0-231-14900-6|pages=xv–xviii|author=Urmilā Pavāra|access-date=10 March 2012}}</ref>

== Awards and accolades ==
Pawar won the [[Lakshmibai Tilak|Laxmibai Tilak]] award for the best published autobiography given by the [[Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad]] (Maharashtra Literary Conference), Pune for ''Aaidan''.<ref name="Rege2006">{{cite book|first=Sharmila |author-link=Sharmila Rege |last=Rege|title=Writing caste, writing gender: reading Dalit women's testimonies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Msaki69NQHsC&pg=PA256|year=2006|publisher=Zubaan|isbn=978-81-89013-01-1|pages=256–265}}</ref> Pawar rejected the award. In a letter to the Parishad, she explained that the intent to start the programme with a prayer to goddess Saraswati indicated an attempt to project symbols and metaphors of a single religion. She questioned why such ideas should be present in Marathi literature.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Rai|first=Nandini|date=December 2007|title=Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Narrating Dalit Women's Testimonios, 2006|journal=Social Change|volume=37|issue=4|pages=211–213|doi=10.1177/004908570703700413|s2cid=151700198|issn=0049-0857}}</ref>

Pawar was also awarded the Matoshree Bhimabai Ambedkar Award by the Sambodhi Pratishthan in 2004 for her work in the fields of literature and activism.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://m.dailyhunt.in/news/india/marathi/lokmanthan-epaper-lokmanth/pra+aashalata+kambale+yanna+bhimabai+aambedakar+puraskar-newsid-76027640?listname=topicsList&index=0&topicIndex=0&mode=pwa|title=Dailyhunt|website=m.dailyhunt.in|access-date=2018-11-13}}</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pawar, Urmila}}
[[Category:20th-century Indian women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian writers]]
[[Category:1945 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Marathi-language writers]]
[[Category:Women writers from Maharashtra]]
[[Category:People from Ratnagiri district]]
[[Category:Indian autobiographers]]
[[Category:Indian women non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:Women autobiographers]]
[[Category:Indian Buddhists]]
[[Category:Converts to Buddhism from Hinduism]]
[[Category:Ambedkarites]]
[[Category:Dalit women writers]]

Urmila Pawar - Revision history

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